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Besides, the reality is that we will never again get huge numbers watching county cricket. Why? Because there are seven Test matches, all on there (he gestures to a television screen). Ten one-dayers, all on there."The running of first-class cricket is more professional than ever, but I don't think any county is financially self-supporting. They each get £1.28m a year from the ECB, which helps them to stay afloat." I ask whether his lordship would like to reduce the number of counties? "I think we would probably be better off with 12, but that is not my brief, and quite clearly not the brief of the ECB, which in its articles of association states that 18 first-class counties, plus the MCC, are sacrosanct."The ECB recently concluded a deal with the website CricInfo, who will pay £250,000 a year to sponsor the County Championship.

It is invidious, of course, to compare cricket (from which an accomplished player might expect to make £100,000 a year) with football (did somebody mention Sol Campbell?). But even so, isn't £250,000 a rather pitiful sum compared with the £48m Barclaycard are shelling out to sponsor the Premier League? MacLaurin ­ who wielded a doughty bat for Kent second XI and might have gone further had he not jacked it all in to join a cheap old grocer, as Colin Cowdrey used to jest ­ swats my implied criticism for four. "The ECB's annual turnover is £70m, and we are responsible for all the monies within cricket," he says. "To put that in perspective, £70m is about the same turnover as Manchester United The average county turns over about £2m. Also, I know how many requests I got when I was chairman of Tesco to sponsor this, that or the other."He is now chairman of Vodafone, who have just renewed their sponsorship of the England team and the England women's team A happy coalescence of interests, I remark MacLaurin smiles "I don't get involved with negotiations We have a marketing department. It might just help that the chairman is also chairman of the ECB, and the chief executive is a cricket nut, but seriously, we don't say 'you've got to put sponsorship money into cricket'."Fair enough. It would be a peevish observer indeed who sought to criticise MacLaurin's stewardship of cricket.

In any case, he rather disarmingly points out his own Achilles' heels, noting that the ECB's commitment to youth cricket ­ "we are the only national sport spending over 10 per cent of our broadcasting income on the grass-roots of the game" ­ has to overcome the handicap of all those Tesco superstores built on all those school playing fields.That said, he has been charged with having a blind spot where Alec Stewart is concerned, following Stewart's alleged implication in cricket corruption. I put this to him, and he describes the conversation he had with Stewart when the bookmaker Mukesh Gupta's allegations first surfaced, while England were in Pakistan. "I asked him some very specific questions, and his answers were fine by us." Well, they would be, wouldn't they? "Yes, but I can't suspend him when he denied it completely. I also said: 'Alec, if this is not the truth, if you have lied to me, you know what will happen?' And he said: 'Yes, chairman.'"Because we have got to get corrupt people out of the game, as South Africa have done with Hansie (Cronje). There's no point having little stupid bans of six months."So while the ECB has notionally cleared Stewart of any wrongdoing, MacLaurin welcomes the fact that he and others are still under investigation by Lord Condon.

And hopes that Condon's report will prompt the International Cricket Council (ICC) to take decisive action when it next meets, on 18 June.MacLaurin is England's representative on the ICC, but not that august organisation's stoutest admirer. If he can stop the ICC prevaricating, that will be another feather in a cap that already resembles Sitting Bull's head dress.. Things are going in threes as the second Test approaches. The host county, Lancashire, decided several weeks ago to market the match to the Asian community as a home game for Pakistan. This week, race riots have broken out in Oldham, just up the road from Old Trafford. And Nasser Hussain, England's non-playing captain, has called on Asian Britons to support England, rather than the country of their descent.